Paul writes Yuri Maltsev:

I’ve just been listening to the talk you gave to the AAPS in Omaha last May, and thought it excellent.

Here in Britain our hospitals are increasingly like the sort of thing you describe [in the USSR]: It’s interesting to speak to those who are old enough to remember what British hospitals were like before 1948 (the year in which the Socialist health minister boasted of his effectively buying off the doctors, infamously saying of his bribery, “I stuffed their mouths with gold”). Those with memories of pre-War Britain typically speak of clean, efficient hospitals, run capably by people who took genuine pride and pleasure in their work. Nursing was a vocation, and nurses prided themselves on the care they gave patients. The dignity of patients was sacrosanct.

Today, British hospitals are sort-of ideological workshops. Various neo-Marxist dogmas are now the core values: ethnic diversity, feminism, “equality,” etc. Doctors are screened for potential thought crimes by means of strange questionnaires. Nursing is no longer a vocation: Nurses now have to have degrees (since feminism demands that that nurses, who are still by and large female, should have “equality” with doctors, who are still by and large male — and a degree is a step towards this “equality,” as well as being of course a perfect vehicle for serious indoctrination). The result is a politically correct bureaucracy, with the corrupting effects which one would expect. Homo Sovieticus is alive and well in British hospitals.

I really enjoyed your talk. Whenever Soviet dissidents speak, it’s like opening a window and breathing fresh air. I don’t know whether it’s part of the Russian character, or merely the consequences of having experienced full-blown Socialism, but it’s such a delight to hear. People like you, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Yuri Bezmenov throw away the West’s worst social niceties (such as the argumentum ad temperantiam which has been so skilfully exploited by Leftists here over the years) and cut to the chase. People in the West are decadent and rich, and flirt with Socialism because it’s long been the fashion (although it’s hardly new) — everyone from famous intellectuals to Hollywood actors to rock stars espouse it, though few would seriously wish to live under it.

Anyway, I’ve had enough of Britain and its creeping Fabianism. I’m leaving for a former Socialist country: I’m hoping to buy a house in the former DDR. Everybody says how expensive health insurance is in Germany (and indeed it is, by Western standards), but being old and ill in Britain is a game of Russian roulette. I’d sooner get out of here while I’m still young, and raise a family in a saner country.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.